Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Batman Begins

High expectations can be your worst enemy. I'm sure they were a big part of why I disliked Batman Begins. But personally, I'd place the Lion's share of the blame on hack extraordinaire David Goyer- and the studio mindset that put him in the scriptwriter's chair. Batman Begins tells the story of how, well, Batman begins.
 Traumatized by the violent murder of his parents, multimillionaire Bruce Wayne travels the world incognito on a quest to understand crime in order to stop it. In an unspecified asian country, he meets and bonds with a mysterious stranger who inducts him into a brotherhood of ninjas (...). Bruce returns home to Gotham City after betraying the order, and uses his training and resources to fight crime in an armoured costume. Cheap psychology and philosophy are at the order of the day, but it works somehow, thanks to excellent performances by Christian Bale, Liam Neeson and especially Michael Caine.
 The cinematography is quite beautiful; I don't think Gotham has ever been so well realised (while Tim Burton's was aesthetically better, this one looks real). The soundtrack is excellent as well, and the action is decent. Even the script holds up pretty well, at first; for every dodgy spot, there is a cool one to be found- the movie generates enough goodwill to overlook the hackwork.
 That is, until it caves in under its own weight. With all its nods towards a more mature, gritty approach (ninjas notwithstanding), the ridiculous scope and suspiciously tidy resolutions become too much to ignore at a certain point. The worst revelation, and emblematic of the problems plaguing the movie, is that the main bad guy is also responsible for the death of Bruce Wayne's parents. And that's not just stupid, it's cheap.
 Think about it. Batman Begins is a movie that begged for a low key, more naturalistic take; for a while, it delivers, but the last half hour is just too much to take. I really wanted to like this movie. I still do, in a fashion. It could have been a great movie, but settles with being a solid action/adventure flick. Fuck you, David Shithead Goyer.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Touching the Void

In 1985, after successfully reaching the peak of peruvian mountain Siula Grande through a previously unused route (this, apparently, is a Big Deal for mountain climbers), one of the pair of climbers suffers an accident and breaks his leg. His partner is forced to cut him loose and leave him for dead, but he miraculously survives and reaches home camp after a grueling trek.
Touching the Void chronicles the ordeal through extensive interviews with all three protagonists, breathtaking location shots, and (shudder), reenactment. The story itself is amazing, the kind of crap that would get booed out of the screen as completely bollocks- except for the fact that it really happened. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates are pleasant and candid, making for some very engaging narrative, and director Kevin MacDonald does a great job of asking difficult questions and bringing the different elements in the movie to life. The scene where Simon is forced to cut the rope tethering his partner has more pathos than a hundred summer blockbusters, and Joe's description of his leg injury is far more painful than any graphic maiming.
Even the recreation, normally the weakest link in this kind of production, is strong, underlining the narration and faithfully conveying the beauty and danger of the mountain. It stumbles later on, particularly when trying to capture the maddening final leg of Joe's journey, but it mostly does right by the material.

In the end, everything is secondary to the story. Even without suspense, the movie manages to trap you completely. And while I would normally be cheering for the mountain, two things align myself with the two human protagonists. One is that they seem to be decent folk, not just Xtreme idiots. The other thing- at one point, when faced with the absolute certainty of death, Joe decides that that he is not going to pray, and discovers that he really does not believe in god. You just have to respect that.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Sin city

What can you say about a movie where someone rips out another man's balls with his own hands? Fucking awesome, that’s what you say. The eunuch's head is then pounded into jelly... oh, bliss.

Stylish, exciting and relentlessly violent, Sin City follows three vaguely interlocking stories set in the same city. A cop battles a serial rapist/killer (and the web of corruption that protects him), a thug goes on a bloody rampage to resolve the murder of a whore, and an assassin gets involved in a war between a confederation of bitches and the forces of pimpdom. The movie oozes blood and testosterone, and proudly exists in a realm completely separate from reality.
The aesthetic is that of classic 40s noir movies, but modern sport cars race the streets. The men are heroic, doomed forces of nature, and women are firmly in the background as plot devices. A brawler can hit someone and send him flying ten meters, and wire-fu is relegated to a despicable assassin. A shot to the head is only an inconvenience, and someone can jump down three stories to skip the stairs- because, you know, he's so fucking macho, that his three-feet diameter titanium balls will break the fall (and possibly the pavement).

And you know what? All of this doesn't break the suspension of disbelief. In boldly going forward with an almost surrealistic visual design, it not only manages to lovingly recreate the source material (in the best translation of comic aesthetics to the screen you are likely to see short of full-out animation), but also makes all the weirdness easier to accept. In throwing away all restrictions, the directors are free to pursue the essence of pulp/noir, and get damn near to it. It's such a pure representation of the genre, that it looks completely new... and that is something worth celebrating in itself.

Just about the only criticism that can I can make on this movie is that after Merv's story is done, anything else can only go downhill- but that's more praise than criticism. From the very beginning, the dry, slghtly ridiculous noir-y voiceover hits the perfect note. Minutes later, you see Bruce Willis 'drive' a car: his hands move the steering wheel whithout any correlation to the superimposed road receding in the background. Right about then, five minutes into the movie, you know you're in for a treat.
And Rodriguez, Miller and Co. never disappoint.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

The Punisher

 Note from future me: Holy shit, I was exceptionally homophobic for this one... sorry about that.
 I was on the verge of deleting it, because, well, no excuses, it's pretty dire, and not just in the basic humanity side of things - it really is a terrible write-up - but I'm leaving this one up because I do think I was right in that this is movie is extremely homoerotic, and in a weird way; it's not as if all the camp is a theme or anything, unless it's commenting on action movies... which might well be, but the movie didn't seem remotely smart enough to do. Maybe I'd need to watch it again, but... nah.

Undercover cop makes one last bust, retires, and goes to enjoy life with his family. Bad, unconvincing bad guys kill his family and him. Or not? Cop survives due to the mysterious powers of plot convenience. He then goes on to get revenge. While this setup would prepare you for an extremely bad movie (and it is), you hardly would expect much in the way of homosexual content... (or maybe you would, it is called The Punisher after all). Oh, but there is. This movie is gayer than Top Gun... hell, it's gayer than Hot throbbing Sailor Bumfucks XVII Let's get the least important stuff out of the way. It sucks as an action movie. It's poorly choreographed, has no imagination at all, and there is no pathos because the characters are all poorly thought out cartoons. In fact it bears honorable mention because it's Bad Enough to Be Good; I have already commented on just how rare these are, and the Punisher would be noteworthy only for that distinction. There's a scene with a close up of the main character's face, while flashbacks play as fade ins. There are reaction shots to supporting... well, actors, making faces that in a fair world would count as major criminal offenses. There is the ultimate mark of a hack action movie: the training sequence. Clumsy exposition and idiotically quirky characters. This one covers all the bases, and has absolutely no talent to back it up. So what about the gay part? what indeed. Here's a short list of highlights: * There is a (lame) explanation for this next sequence, but frankly, it stinks, and this movie doesn't deserve a break. So: at one point The Punisher 'tortures' a man by removing his shirt, tying him up, hanging him upside down... and rubbing a popsicle on his back. I wish I was making this shit up. The sequence ends whith the popsicle shoved in the guy's mouth. I hope you swallow. * A guy enters the dive where The Punisher is having breakfast. This guy looks seriously gay- painted fingernails, and making faces at our manly hero- everything short of blowing kisses. So, he opens his guitar case... and pulls out... a guitar. And Serenades him. All the while, they cast longing, smoldering gazes at each other. Sizzling, baby! Oh, and his name is Harry Heck. Pffft. * A girl touches our hero, and he flinches away. We're talking a seriously hot girl here. Later, she all but offers a blowjob. His response? "I'm not what you're looking for". Ostensibly, a heterosexual man. * Another hired killer looks like a reject from the Village people. He wears a tight striped shirt, and is strongly reminiscent of either a sailor or a circus strongman. Name: the Russian. The fight is long and arduous; I'm not normally one to say that fight scenes are stand ins for sex scenes, but this one would be a good case for that point of view. * What would Charles Bronson do if you offed his family? he'd kill you, your family, and your dog, painfully. And then he'd invent time travel to kill you all over again. What does The Punisher do? he comes up with a ludicrously convoluted, implausible plan to get his nemesis to kill his wife and his best friend, just so he can dramatically uncover his manipulations just before the final kill. Hell hath no fury like a Gorgeous Dreamboat Queen scorned. * Talking about killing the bad guy- they embrace, and he stabs him repeatedly... the camera emphasizes the powerful thrusts, and Travolta says over and over in a breathy (and whiny, but that's his normal tone) voice "you're killing me". His tone lies somewhere between pain and ecstasy. All this peppered with loving shots of well chiseled abs and sweaty male torsos, and none-too-subtle innuendo. I am serious here, this movie is Gay Paradise. And I'm also serious when I say I enjoyed every minute of it. This is pure, unadulterated, grade A shit here, and it had me laughing almost non-stop. Unintentional comedy indeed.

Boa Vs Python

It's almost enough for me to believe that there is a god, after all. Not just one, but three little gems discovered this last few weeks.

This is the first one. A movie so incredibly crappy it is supremely enjoyable, and awe inspiring in its sheer lack of talent. The kind of bad movie that's unintentionally hilarious ALL the time... except, of course, when it's trying to be funny.
How can I possibly begin to sum it up? It's a complete, unmitigated disaster. Bad in absolutely every conceivable way (ther redhaired girl is pretty hot, though). The faces these 'actors' make at the camera alone would be enough to sink it, but add to that crappy CGI work, a willingness to plumb cliches even Michael Bay would consider lame, and some of the most head-slappingly stupid scenes in recent memory... shit in such a concentrated form, it has turned into a diamond. It's so bad it's transcendent. For at least ten years, all the bad movies have been offensively mediocre, extremely bad in such a way that no entertainment could be derived from them at all.
Watching this movie has made my week. B-movies can overcome monetary limitations and be good, as movies like Tremors or Dog Soldiers amply demonstrate. They can even be better than full budget studio movies; the first fight scene in Dog Soldiers, for example, is about as exciting and cool as anything Hollywood puts out these days. Boa Vs Python takes the opposite path: it elevates unwitting cheesiness to an art form, and ends up just as entertaining. The pleasure you take in it has traces of morbidity (holy shit, it can't be this bad), power trip (yes, there are people way more stupid than you out there), and unbelieving shock (holy shit, it really is this bad)
You've got to watch this. Period.